A stubborn lunatic’s guide to making great art
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M for free. I'm going to try the substance even though i'm scared of scary movies. If you watch IT too many.

Welcome the search engine M, P. vote. No question too big, no question too small, no question too repetitively echoing in my head seven times today.

okay. I've been telling stories professionally for sixteen years. I complained about working like anybody else. But the more honest part of me always knows that, really, i'm getting away with something.

Being paid to make art you love is as close to a scm as you can run without being a legal danger. IT feels impossible that this is all true. And the thing is, some years IT wasn't true when I ve ve started an audio.

Podcasting didn't really exist. Who was radio? And there would have been no business model to support a show like when you're listening to. I've been here long enough that i've watched the business model arrive.

I worked for a few years where there was tons of money in podcasting, and i'm here in the air after where a low tide ebs again, the state of things comes up on the show sometimes, because one of the biggest questions that actually preoccupied me day to day is, how are we going to get people to pay for this shit free art? Pay what you want is a funny thing to build a life on. IT preoccupied me, and I know IT as me, because lately, when I see something good, I movie a book, a live event.

I don't think so much about the creative choices enabling IT. I think, how is this getting funded even? What does the lifestyle of the person who made this look like that IT permits them to make art? Do they have kids? Where do they live? This documentary came out the sweet called a wise guy, which is about the reno s my favorite v show, maybe my favorite piece of narrative art.

And watching IT, IT felt like the documentary was asking the same question that has been, how to make? How do you make something personal and important when the entire system is conspiring to keep that stuff off the air? The documentary, appropriately, is by the director alex gibney, who has spent his career definitely making non commercial films.

He may be going clear, critical. One of the more lawsuit happy groups in america, scientologists. He won an Oscar for his bleak but fascinating documentation about american torture.

Taxi to the dark side. He also works in the same office. may. So sometimes we see each other at the coffee machine. I still know how to work. I wanted to ask Alice, give me how to work, that coffee machine just getting. I wanted to ask you me how he's figured out how to make a career doing risky, creative work that other people pay for. And also about what he learned from interviewing sereno crater, David chase, one of the people who most successful ly made something personal and strong, also connecting with a massive audience. Alec's, welcome to search engine.

Hey, thanks. B. J. Good to be here.

So this is my theory for the structure of ebb de. The Sabrina OS was a show about observing decline. The pilot of the supra o opens with this monogue from tony soprano about how amErica is in decline, how he was born too late and he missed the good old days.

You are documenting how the story of disappearance being made is a story of a different kind of decline. Like A T, V show from this blip of a moment, where talent shows that were that good could get on the air. Your project is a documentary. The documentary business, many people have observed, is in its own state decline. And then I wanted to interview you about all this on a podcast.

podcasting in the .

client very much. And then my plan is at the end of this interview will probably yes.

The japanese have a term for that chune it's mutual suicide, right?

That's like, I love that's what to teach this. Interested as a vision. What do you agree generally with our pharmacy?

I do.

I do. okay. So my first question, just like the way tony support feels about america, to what degree do you feel that way about documentary film in america?

Well, at the moment, I kind of feel the way tony does. I think the golden age of documentary, which is proclaim, maybe even as recently as like four years ago now feels like it's got a lot rest on that.

I wanted to rewind a little bit the rest before for the recent golden era. I asked alex to tell me the story of how he first fell in love with documentation. Film, one of show businesses bless profitable avenues.

Alexis story begins decades ago, the first era of his career, which he spent in the creative wilderness. He grew up in new england and moved to california in late one thousand nine hundred and seventies to go to film school. At you see a ee.

so I made documentaries in film school, and one of the ones I made in film actually got on T. V, which was back in. No, hugely successful. But then I went through a long period where I was unemployed, even if I had kids. And if I was going in to look for a job, my wife would always say, honey, listen, if they ask you what you do, don't say you make documentaries because then you'll never get hired for whatever is you want to do because you couldn't get hired to make documentaries.

Oh, they would see IT is like, why would we hire you even for like a commercial or something like that.

right? Because you're interested in documentary and documentaries. Spinach, and nobody cares about them.

Why did you like them?

I like them because, I mean, when I was going to college, you'd see them at film societies along side the feature films. So to me, they were movies like, you know, give me shelter documentary, great documentary, really entertaining. And then fred wiseman, always like this films. And barber couples, harland county USA, would stop them in their documentaries, right? So I thought they were great.

But there came a period and particularly the period of cable TV was a period where channels were like you were supposed be able to recognize them as you went up and down the dial with your clicker before there were too many channels to use a clicker. yeah. So that if you went by A N is like, oh, that's A E because you can automatically tell like in three seconds what the channel is.

And so documentaries just became either something that was all that was on P, B S, even though they weren't always doll on P B S, or that was just a cable channel documentary which made IT was just more father. They were all stamp with the kind of corporate seal. There was no personality to them.

Like the documentaries that I liked, like the ones I just talked about, even the cinema, very ones where you don't hear a narrow or anything, know the cinema, very, a filmmaker saw tubs and cells as visual poets. yeah. So there was A A marka personality to them.

That's what was intriguing and engaging. They were engaging with real life. But IT wasn't some stand toria narr telling you the way the world was. So you're showing up .

at a moment where you are you are feeling a little bit, tony soprano ask in that you're missing a slightly bygone era and you have a vision for what you want to make. But we're the landscape that you first arrived to was not a landscape those .

conducive to IT. That's right. There was a lot of years in the wilderness I spent doing other stuff, whether I was doing some journalism where I cut explanation trailers for a while, all sort of stuff.

Did you feel like a person who'd, like, fAllen in love with the wrong thing? Yeah.

I had. And my wife was particularly convened and fall in in love with the wrong thing. What about the post office? A regular hours? Because I was always I had a zilia projects yeah right. But the project never went anywhere.

Alexis time in the creative wilderness, his post office era lasted for years. That ninety eighties split into the one thousand nine hundred in the late nineties. He has this moment that really helps him understand the art form and the industry he's pledged themselves to that helped to understand why IT is he's been so stuck.

That was the period when I was scuffling up in canada trying to make something. I was trying to make IT for the disney channel. And then the disney channel had a change of heart about what I was going to do, because macalisters, you know, was caught trying to make a slave. right?

What happened? okay.

So the disney channel was gonna to become an a americana channel, OK. And as part of that, the first show this is going to be my big break, was gonna, a dock series that I invented called the fifty, based on a book by David helberson the fifties. And IT was cool, was like to tapping music, but he was serious stuff, but told in a very entertaining way somewhere along the line.

Michican is part of this american na project, decided that he was going to build in americana museum, sort of like disney world. yeah. But iran, in the two problems, one was, he was gonna d up by a civil war battle field. And two was discovered that one of the highlights of the park was going to be a slave ride.

taking amusing park ride to .

show you what I would would have been like to be a slave.

yeah.

WPS a quite .

tangible, but I think it's that this is a quote from disney, bob west, the park's creative director at the time, quote, the park will deal with the higher lows. We want to make you feel what I was like to be a slave and what IT was like to escape through the underground railroad. That quote inspired more public outrage.

Disney CEO Michael eisler jumped to defend the amusement parks ride, saying code, if people think we will back off, they're mistaken. People were not mistaken. Disney did back off scribing not just the ride of the entire park.

And ultimately, the american A, T, V channel executives, like the one who made this series of decisions, are the people who control the money that determines what someone like Alice give me is allowed to make. That's just the reality we live in. In this case, though, ox's project wasn't actually killed. IT was just moved over to a different channel.

All this is a long way of saying that when I came time for the premier, the fifties, my co creator traced IT off and I went down. And at some point during the big party, which was at the hard rock cafe, they said, and now we'd like to introduce the people who are responsible for the series. And I had blad this series for like three years, you know, move to canada in order to be able to do IT.

And so tracing our pumping ourselves up and then they proceeded to introduce the advertisers. But the exact that a ne didn't really even understand why we were there. Like why would you bother that to show up? You're just wickets. You know, the people who are really important are the advertised .

as like the paper to our company. Yeah so what did you understand in that moment?

Well, I understood that TV isn't about the conversation between a creator and a viewer. You're about renting viewers to advertisers, right? And that the creators aren't really creators at all, that you're just providing the catnip that you know is just tasty enough, it's good enough to lure you in so that you you'll stay for half our and please, the advertisers. And the last thing they want is any kind of personality or originality.

You thought that the ads were what was interrupting your program. And what you understood in that moment is that you were the stuff in between, correct? Aleph learned the reason why I was so hard to make the complicated stories.

He wanted to make his real job as his boss understood. IT wasn't to find audiences who wanted to be chAllenged. He was to make indefensible mass market content to put in between commercials.

Alice sydney was not happy towards that in some people's eyes. Who's really there to help paper tows. For the record, this podcast is at supported.

I actually feel mostly OK about IT when we're work on the story. The person whose happiness I think about is the listeners, not the advertisers. I've never had to worry about not covering a topic because it's gonna upset like an internet based mattress company.

I do think the thing everyone's trying to figure out is how do I make the thing I want to make and find all the weirdos out there who might enjoy IT. And for twenty years, the audience that would enjoy and pay for alex's work, they existed. But he couldn't prove IT.

His big break would come in the early two thousands when he just turned fifty years old. What happened was that a few stylish voc documentaries broke out his heads. Supersize me.

Bowling for columbine films like those, plus the rise of reality T. V, meant that executives warmed to the idea that viewers might find unscripted stories interesting for alex, who's spent decades subsisting million on hope. This moment was a nice surprise.

IT felt awesome. And now I did. They write bigger and Better checks for IT. But you know, sometimes you could take a swing and make IT for a little bit of money and sell IT for a lot. And there was a tremendous amount of excitement because IT was about how do you do something weird and original? Yeah, that was seen as a market benefit.

What were the kinds of things that you made in that moment that you feel like they were surprised to be allowed to make?

And right, who makes a film about accounting? In two thousand .

and five all extract a film called the iron the smartest guys in the room. IT was a document about accounting, but not just accounting. It's the story of the non scandal where executives at a power company used fragile ent accounting to make IT seem like they were making tons of money while hiding their mounting debt along the way they wanted.

They committed memorable crimes. Some of those crimes actually caught on tape aid in the documentary. 哎。

David, up in anyone, there is not much demand for power at all. More if we SAT IT down. Can you bring IT back up? And three year, four hours, she's go down. okay.

In the scene, Alice uses audio that he got a non employees intentionally creating a power outage in california. Just reduce demand .

once you guys to get a little creative OK and come up with the reason that go down like a four star age public.

It's a stunning picture of a company with the power to just manipulate stranger's lives that will IT plays like a hollywood movie for alex. This is the exact kind of film that for years he could not have dreamed of getting a chance to make. Did you feel like I can play them from .

getting away with this kind of? Because when I made IT, even in the first five minutes of that film, there's a lot going on. There's a recreation of a suicide.

There's A A A strange tom weight song call. What's he building in there? IT was an odd, an idiot syncrude film in many ways. That was about something that was famous. Yeah, know the collapse of anyone.

But I kept asking people kind of like David, jeez, kept asking himself, is a photographer? Ld me, is like sending people to watch this ship. And that's what I kept wondering, like, is that going to get in to sun dance? Like, is anybody gna watch this?

You had the feeling of M. I too far out on a ledge, even if IT was creatively fulfilling. And to that two thousand five and run, IT did hit a cultural.

and he was like a what I call a taxi driver film, like you be riding at a taxi and the taxi driver would be saying, hey, man, to be seen that andron movie.

Everyone was nominated for an Oscar. And in the afternoon, Alice career entered this new phase where people with money now trusted him. And of course, he cashed that capital in to make even more seemingly uncommercial film.

This one was called taxi to the dark side. It's a documentary about an afghan taxi driver who was beaten to death by american interrogators. Alex is. He made the movie in part to broadcast this observation about human nature that he noticed. He learned that the american interrogators had kept torturing their prisoner even after they knew that there was no intelligence to gain from him.

So there was something terrifying at the heart of IT that said something very deep and disturbing about human nature. And also, IT was told us a story about a poor innocent who got caught in a machine. No, of cruelly, I feel like one of the network .

exactly because it's like you are talking about the actual heart and meaning of these stories. And i'm like, what were the economic conditions like right up again? Well.

I think there was always this thinking, which is ironic in this case, like if you made something really well, you might win awards right now. Awards are sometimes economically viable and sometimes they're good for a business long term. Yeah and that's why interesting movie still get mates sometimes because people are looking for t oh, this might win in award.

And in fact, that one did everyone in all the bigger words.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but before this conversation, I never really got the point of awards for art. The idea that you pay money to submit your work, to be judged by your peers has always smell a little bit to me like a vanity scam over somebody like alex. Awards have been vital.

A movie about torture might never make a ton of box office cash, but IT can win an Oscar, which can be its own motivation for a thunder to put their money in. The thing sweeping his career forward now wasn't just a greater cultural appreciation for art power. Interrogating documentation was at the business model kept changing in ways that favored creators like alex.

Dvds arrived, allowing filmmakers to charge consumers more for her movies and they had with h. And then dvds were replaced by internet streaming companies in the battle to be the next netflix. Streamers spent heavily on new work, including special documentaries, which were a relatively cheap to you are a premium channel plus in the streaming era, a film didn't need be such a big hit because the companies were Better at algorithm ally targeting little sub communities, they were likely to enjoy a specific film.

They had a philosophy which was communities of interest. And so long as you could keep those people subscribing to your service, that was good, right? And they would be super happy. Now other people might come over to IT, but if people weren't that interested, maybe they wouldn't come to IT. So IT was just a way of getting some people hugely excited about a film as opposed to trying to get everybody willing to buy that saudi quiston right.

Because the study is is always going to be like I think they've Foster walus wrote that um we're unique in our high brow taste, but we tend to be common in our low brow taste like everybody is curious about a murder. Everybody is curious on some of all about a celebrity or most people are, but if you can target small, passionate audiences, you can target them in more specific ways so you can make things that are more lucrative or personal.

inventive or whatever, right? And you're also not afraid when IT comes to certain subjects to offend people.

So what's the point at which the streaming age starts to feel I don't want say bad, that's like I just a simple way to put IT. But what is the hardware or the moment where the limitations of the new model .

start to reveal themselves to you as a for maker? And I really do think that is pendel. C. I think they may have been warning signs about IT before, but the pandemics really does IT because the pandemic takes away theatrical and theatrical, even in the small world world, you know, people would go out to those films, they would pop up.

I mean, the viewer and someone who is completely unsophisticated understanding of the film industry. I don't see that much stuff in theatres, but I do use stuff being in theatres as a sign that I .

should pay attention to. IT, yeah. And the way you say that is exactly the way that worked in terms. In other words, theatrical distribution, particularly for independent films, was almost always a loss leader. yeah.

IT usually didn't pay for itself in theatres, but IT IT was a signal that I was I was good and and also the film festival world, all of that. And then people would show up and beard. But then inside of the pandemic happened suddenly.

Theatres flat line. Yeah, nobody. He's going theatres during a pandemic. And also, there starts to be a huge consolidation in the streaming industry or a streaming cable industry because now streamers and cable casters are starting to be one.

And now they are our power. They would make the cheapest thing. They can make a product that a little bit worse, but where they call back a little bit more money. And then what is that look like for you? Like when you're trying to .

make something that is well, then IT becomes harder because, you know, you go to people and you say, I want to one streamer with a film I had called citizen key know, which is kind of a look at putin's russia through this Oliver name, michot kosky, who then, when things turned in two thousand and three, spent ten years in the gulag, and I went to one streamer, and the streamer said, you know, is a good film, but we don't want to offend russia really.

Yeah, we don't want to end russia. Oh, okay, wow. okay. No, taken. You know, because you can see the commercial considerations, particularly in a global economy.

began to take over. What alex is saying is that in the previous more competitive era, some upstart streamer may be willing to take on the risk of offending russia, but now in this less competitive moment, with fewer people funding work like the systems, overall risk tolerance goes down. Another side effect of a system that wants less risky movies is that a lot of the biggest documentary in the past couple years have just been adoring profiles of celebrities who frequently get a lot of creative input and sometimes even final cut.

And I think in a way, it's kind of obvious why that is. If you want a big audience, you make a list of the top twenty celebrities. And you think if we do a Taylor swift documentary, we're going to get a big audience because her audience is big, right? So you're just borrowing Taylor swift audience.

The difference is that for a network or a channel or even a streamer early on that they would have editorial control. That would be a good thing that, that showed a dedication to certain journal, alister and editorial principles and to never give the subject control not anymore gone. And I think that to some extent, you think yourself okay, like i've made commercials before, like when I make a commercial for a client, I don't expect editorial control because this is a commerce yeah but that's the problem. It's like there's this another world at the moment where the celebrity and the channel wants the viewer to believe that it's a documentary yeah one in its in fact of commercial.

So when to talk with this reason project, when H. B, O comes to you and says we want you to make a film about a David hand, and that's about the people, were you worried that what they wanted was and look.

HBO has been pretty fearless over the years in terms of their willingness to do top stuff. But IT just felt to me like, I love the show, but do I want to do like a special on the sabino? IT didn't feel that interesting to me.

But then when I SAT down and with David and maam, he was a fascinating character. But also I realized, wow, he went through back then, what I am, many others are going through right now, the battle, the battle. Meaning, how do you get something personal and important on when everything about the system is inspiring? Keep IT off.

How do you make something personal and important when everything about the system is conspiring to keep IT off? I've sure break the story of a person who did that, maybe the most successful ly of anyone, a guy with a tortured relationship with his mother to one of the whole world, to find that drama interesting.

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Welcome back to the show .

so I could give me a talented .

and stubborn man who figured out how to make personal art in a system designed to stuff IT out. His latest film is about David chafes, a talented and stubbed man who figured out how to make personal art in a system designed to send IT out. Chase was a TV writer who had had a successful crew commercially in the eighties, in most the nineties, but who now felt profoundly frustrated by the limitations of the form. What is the process by which the experience goes from an idea in David chases head to a television show on tb? O.

okay, so David was just getting tired of doing the TV thing. I mean, had a relatively successful career. He was a show runner at northern exposure, which is a very successful show, and he had done some other once in the past, but he had always wanted to make movies.

Yeah, that's really what he wanted to do. And this was like his last go round. And he had some money put away with just gonna write speed script. Since if he could get a movie made, so IT was like the last round up.

So David is frustrated, done with television, convinced the era is just not one that will let him make work. He finds interesting. He figures he probably needs to switch to movies.

He has this one idea he wants to try. This is a clip from the documentary by the sky. The voice here, here are belongs to David chase.

For years, everybody told me that I had to write something about my mother. SHE was so out there and so funny. My wife, denis, was the first one to say that, and then everybody was saying, you got ta write something.

In the documentary, David case tells gives nee about how colleague Robin Green also push him to try to build a story around his difficult mother in hair pitch. Though he was more autobiographical.

Robinson said, you should write to show that your mother and a TV producer. And I thought, who's going to watch that? But maybe if he was, like, really bad as guy.

maybe that would work. Was the bad guy already a moster?

Yeah, I wanted to get the year and and bankrupt at first. I thought that was a feature. IT was the story that actually was the first season. IT was about a monster, a ghost, a shrink after that to.

And so he writes this script, and he decides to make the fortune as a mobster, tony sereno, who's got a problem with his mother, and in fact, his mother wants to kill em. And he writes the script, and it's really good. And everybody agrees it's really good.

And he starts to take IT around. But at the time, TV was dominated by the three, possibly foreign tork, and they were interested in kind of lows, common and nominator programming and sort of routine zed programing. So he would go from place to place, and they all turned him down.

And less moon vest was that, you know, famous executive at C. B. S. Said, you know, this moster stuff, it's really good.

But you know, are you waited to the therapy? IT was like, yeah, what IT to the therapy? I gai d have to say this IT was the central engine of the entire show.

Yeah, right. So everybody wanted him to do something that was the cliche, and he wanted to do something that was completely different. And IT wasn't told.

The scrip landed at HBO, where they said, wow, this is new and original and different. That was IT. IT was different. And H, B, O was looking to be different. It's not TV, it's H B O, right?

H rio had existed as a cable network in in the nine hundred and seventies, but in the one thousand and nineties the channel was trying to transform itself at the time. Most HBO subsidies provided to watch movies and boxing matches, but HBO like netflix wood, twenty years later, wanted start making more of its tone staff to make a real name for itself. A traditional TV network may have wanted David chase to make the safest, most cost effective version of the readers, but HBO was competing on quality. There might be a lesson here about golden ages that if you're someone who makes stuff, one of the best places you could find yourself is that an upstart company trying to compete against the establishment.

So with H. B, O, I mean, they were making money through subscriptions, and they were showing movies that they would license. They had dipped their tones to series, like with Larry Sanders and with AWS and and this and their thinking pretty good.

Maybe we should try a bigger swing. yeah. And so they were looking for something so moment and different economic model because they don't need to have a big ratings winner.

They just need some people who love a show that's good for them. And then if you love different shows, that's okay. Because this group loves this show and they'll subscribe, and this other group loves this show and theyll subscribe. good.

Everybody doesn't have to love every show, so boys for that moment and then he walks into IT with the script bo, and they're asking the questions where everything is upside down instead of saying like, okay, so we will shoot in L A. And we'll do second unit in jery because that will say money they were like you're going to shoot everything in jersey, right? That's what David said is like, wow, I felt like I landed in an alternate universe.

They're not going to let me do anything I wanted and they pretty much did yeah dave felt I had landed in bizarre world like where the exec were encouraging him to engage his own creativity and to lean in to all the things that were important to him, as opposed to invest in the stereotypes that IT becomes so successful. The sonos was not a confected corporate product. I mean, IT wasn't at all in terms of its artistry and all of that, but didn't come about because David thought, how can I make a lot of money yeah came up about because David was like, i'm obsessed with my mother.

I mean, there's something funny about the idea that millions of dollars were spent and made for someone to just kind of have their work out their .

own personal about their mother. I totally agree. And that to me is the beauty of the moment you came across the network was like, fucking, let's roll the dice. Yeah, you know, what have we got to lose?

But a lot.

I mean, IT is true. And they were scared too. I mean, because after they shot the pilot, they waited six, seven, eight, nine months before they made the decision to go ahead and order the series.

They were terrified, right? Because like, how can you have a mobster who's the protagonist? Yeah, somebody who kills people for a living? Yeah, it's gonna the protagonist of this family drama, right? And they were really nervous about IT.

And one argument that David had with the creative executives at HBO was over tony killing somebody on camera and they were worried that they would turn viewers off. but. David convinced them.

They said, look, or making a show about a mobster, if he doesn't kill the guy who is a snitch, then what are we doing? We're just making bullshit. And so they move forward.

You actually in the movie, you play a clip from that scene, which is kind of fame assad. Episode five, first season, tony y's painter takes his other media on a college tour. And in this moment where you're really seeing him as a sweet dad instead of a mob boss.

Got according eight to fifty two male female ratio, which is great, strong liberal art programme in this cool and art center for music. Usual programs are broader china.

And just apply ready.

leaving some option, dad junior year. And then while he's on this college tour with his daughter, he haven't to run into a guy who's in the witness protection program if we actually snatched on associations of tony ys and IT is like a moment where you feel the show chAllenging you as a viewer because you're seeing him in this very domestic, say, sweet dead guy, and then you're watching him pluck the murder of this guy .

to kill itself is very violent. Choke them to death of the wire.

Come water red.

Who are you?

What is this will make me like you fuck must be something we getting. Tony, it's tony. You fuck you trouble you in now you put them and you broke IT.

I'd daily heard about the argument behind the scene, but the two things that surprised me that I understood in a different or deeper way watching your film, one is you have the real executive who's like a, we'd totally protect him, say this out like you actually, you never see the suits. Like people always talk about the notes from the suits, whatever bit. The zoos never show up and say, this is what I was thinking and why, so you have that.

But then also they talk about how they did say, like, hey, if you are insisting on doing this, like we can be convinced. We can be convinced by the argument that otherwise he is bullshit IT and the show is bullshit. And you have to do this for the show to have integrity and for people to care about IT. But could you make the guy he's going to kill a little bit more .

sort of and yeah and I do.

There's this like moment where there in the parking lot of the motel and you see the guy and he pulls out a pistol, he's in darkness, is amy ing at tony and his daughter and then he realizes there's other people the motel he can get away with that he put the come down but so as as you are, you're feeling a bit more like, okay, this guy, he's threatened him, whatever. And he was funny watching that moment years ago. You know, maybe the was right, like maybe the push pole between the artist and the people who stand for si tish audiences. Maybe he had produce something.

the work yeah, I think that's right. And that's the best thing. Often about notes in general, you know sometimes particularly reaction, not so much the prescription, but the you know the the reaction is like this doesn't feel right. It's sometimes worth listening to.

There's a moment in your film where you're interviewing the writers, this press, they say they don't think the show could be made or made in the same way today. I would be too controversial.

What do you make of that? I think they were talking about political correctness. You know, there was a willingness to say things that were downright offensive, and also a willingness, even in the writer's room, to get ugly, to talk about stuff and away that was brutally honest and would reveal about themselves stuff that wasn't particularly elevating or inspiring. Maybe just the opposite.

In wise guy, the spener's writers talk about the freedom intention. They came with inventing all these unlikeable characters, and then in beware these unlikeable characters with attributes that sometimes came from the writers themselves.

You know, look at somebody like you, uncle junior or tony, Polly. Well, that mean these are like petty, horrible people. So you feel free to talk about anything you wanted.

IT was all just, here is a writing room writing about bad people. Bad people do bad things, and we got to access those parts of ourself. I mean, we said things that nowadays, you know, would be frown upon. We could have been mistaken for being racist, sexist. You name IT is, you know.

we considered having an assistant in there for a while, then realized we couldn't do that.

But that, to me, was actually one of the great lessons of doing the show. It's like when you start to present sor yourselves all the time, we've all got weird, dark, inappropriate feelings or thoughts. And to the extent that they are routinely repressed, they'll come out and unexpected and sometimes dangerous ways. You know, what was that line about if only hitler's art teacher was a little bit more?

attentive.

The terrifying beauty of the show was that these people were so complex, yeah, they were both so charming and brutal. And one of the things that they made a point up during the making of the show, which I thought was so great, as whenever IT seemed that the characters were becoming too likeable, particularly the mobsters were becoming too likeable, they would haven't do something brutal.

Yeah, just to remind you, because also the back of his mind, you know, David is making the show, which is a character drama about a family. But it's also a commentary about amErica and the brutality of amErica and the replacement ously with the which capitalism sort of you choose people up and spits them out. And the sabino is kind of the logical extension of that seen in the godfather.

You know, we are all sitting around the table asking the godfather at the share, all the book, politicians and police officers and it's what we're willing to pay a fee. After all, we're not communist here, right? But it's a brutal commentary on capitalism in amErica and the cruelty of the country.

So all those things are going through their heads and they're willing to be ugly. And I think that's what people ended up loving the show for, is that didn't pull punches and suddenly the uncomfortable conversations that you shy away from because you might defend somebody, they were engaging in those conversations on screen. And that's what great art does. This allows you to get into areas that maybe are not permitted to as part of your daily life.

Yeah, it's funny. It's like, what so brilliant about of being a mob show is that one once there's guns in murder, you can trick people into paying attention to family dynamic, which is party, what he wants to talk about. But also, these writers can take ideas that they have a part of themselves that might be uncomfortable. But now if it's coming out of like the mouth of a murdering mobster, that's a context in which we're willing to sit with those ideas without worrying for hearing art from a bad person.

That's right. But at the same time, because they are all coming out of their personal experiences, I mean, IT was supposed to be about Davids mother. Then all the writers found out that they had major issues for their mothers. So that ends up being know a lot of this experience ends up being universal.

I think the other thing that makes this shows so successful too, is that you, there are a lot of conversations that are extremely unreasonable and they're very funny for, because these brutal mobsters are having very sensitive discussions about how their feelings are hurt. Or should I buy flowers for my wife from her universal rate stuff like that? You know, Normally in most mob movies you see the action yeah you don't see the the day to day interactions where you're trying to figure out whether or not you should show up for your son's soccer practice.

After a short break, Alice kidney, someone who has survived decades, all these different areas of technological and business shifts, who's learned both from his own work and from the work of people like David chase, his boys, on how to keep going .

during tough times.

David chases said that this moment where the spanners was allowed to happen with a lip like whatever window that opened for a moment that he snacks through, he doesn't think that window is open anymore.

Do you agree with that? Well, it's not open under the current system. So something news gonna have to come along to blow IT open again because H.

B. O also, remember, was a different kind of a system. And IT was coming up and they knew they had to do something different or they weren't going to get anywhere.

I mean, what's the point of trying to become another network if you're far behind an sAiling race? IT doesn't make any sense to follow the same wind that already got those boats at the ahead of you. You tack on a different course and hope to catch a different kind of a wind. So at the moment, it's pretty bleak for trying to do personal art that's going to connect with viewers. But the hope is.

I hope at the bottom of pandora box, after a lot of bad shit has come out, is that there is a new distribution mechanism out there that will allow this relationship once again to find a way you know, it's kind of what you see happening in journalism like the sub stack model yeah is interesting because suddenly you see some people are making bank on sub stack by going directly to their readers. interesting. That was the hope in podcast for a while to and actually think podcast you know some overtime still find a way to get audiences but it's not as easier as IT seemed like I was gonna at first.

Yeah I mean, I think in podcasting, certainly there is a moment where it's like you want the moments for the people with money. China, I don't know what they're doing, right? And they're just like betting on a lot of stuff and they're not tracking things very carefully. And what gets harder if you're trying to make something interesting is either they've figured out what works and they just want to do that over over again, that's or they're scared. And I think right nounce men where theyve both figured out which things .

work and they're scared, right? And also, you know some key players in the distribution universe are tech players who have other businesses. Yes, you know, if an apple do I want to do anything that's going to offend somebody, and so they might not buy an iphone or ipad.

And if i'm amazon, do I want to do something that might defend somebody who might buy their sneakers on amazon? You, yeah. And we're never gonna .

be a big enough part of their business to be worth that much headache. And so I think that makes sense. I don't think they think of IT that way like I don't I .

think they think let's do stuff, it's entertaining and they hire e executives who have been in the business before. But over time, tendencies emerge. Yeah and the tendencies are, lets do to the thing that worked the last time that was pretty good.

Yeah or do you want to do the thing that might not work and then you have have a meeting and like the meeting goes badly.

right?

But it's funny. Know what I get from this conversation with you. It's so funny to compare podcasting to film and tell lish because they're like cities and were like some little like eye down. But there is a real sense of dom and gloom and end days and whatever like because there is like such a surgeon in such a crash to hearing the way you look at your industry and look at a Jason industry, IT feels almost more like a sailor .

are looking at tides. Yes, I think that's right. And you're looking over .

into the distance .

for that swell. Yeah, that's gonna different. And I think it'll come because it's always been like that.

You know, you go back to the twenties and the thirties and the forties. Think about what radio producers must have thought with the advent of television. Yeah, it's over for us. It's over.

Yeah, no one. I felt, you know, when I got in the radio IT was like, there was public radio and there was some great programs. But I felt like, what are you doing? Like this is a stupid thing to love. You're just a personal a time. I didn't get in thinking anything good, whatever happen.

There was something I heard the other night. There was I went to a benefit for the small allowed IT up in main, which is a place called the carpenters boats shop, where you know people who have found themselves, you, between and between, spend time at a place where they learn how to build boats. Okay, cool. But this guy who's been doing that, or, you know, who found IT IT and has been running that place for forty five years, talked about his life. He said, I feel like my life is a robot know i'm always looking backwards but moving forwards um and I was like, you know it's not unlike this moment for creators you know you got ta know what's happened behind yeah but you keep going yeah because now there's always a place you can't stay still right yeah and you don't know even when .

you're a living through a good moment. I mean, sometimes you do at the points like you just the people who make stuff and they figure out how to .

make what is the artist born of constraint and dies of freedoms? Because I I can remember there was a period in dogs where was like, i'm not gonna a thing for under, you know, two more or three. That's just the way is.

And then I remembered, like, there was supposedly a conversation between li benwell and Nicholas ray in spain at some point, and ben well, who had sort of learned how to save money by being a producer, was notorious for being very cheap and very efficient. And shooting, used to call a mr. Collapsed ck, because you, to edit these movies, all you do is you cut out the collapsed ck.

And then he sent IT to the lab, right? But he was telling ray, who was very frustrated after a duncan of cases, just can get my own movies made. He said, well, you know, maybe if you reduce your budgets, I like fifty percent, you'd get a maid and Nicholas said, nobody would ever respect me, you know, in the industry if I did that.

IT was kind of as a deeply sad moment and and they both walked away from the dinner like not understanding what the other person was thinking about are saying and it's hard because, you know, for elementaries at a certain moment, instead of being the person who had to pretend that they weren't really interested in documentaries in order to get hired me, yeah right. Suddenly you could walk around and actually you you could buy a house, you could think about sending your kids to college. There was a business, there was an industry that could support people without you having to do some other job in order to do the job you want to. On the other hand, you know, there comes a moment when if you really love what you're doing, you figure out a way to make IT work, yes, and screw the suits. Yeah no.

I totally agree. And into weird, I identify with both people in that conversation. Like I understand the feeling of I don't want to make something had any less of a resource level than the highest resource level i've ever participated in.

But I also understand that you point of like art is making IT like art is making IT when it's hard, art is doing IT under constrains. Often times the money is a questionable gift. I mean, like often times the things you invent because you have to are just as worthwhile and vital as the things that are much Better cared. And it's funny, I always end up lost these conversations raging about the unfairness of the industry because there's a part me that feels that there's a part me and just like you to work.

Not right.

So what did we learn this week about surviving as a kind of lon attack? Who wants to meet things for living? I think what I hear analysis story and in David chases, is that to survive a creative dark age, IT helps to have a kind of pathological stubbings IT also helps to be willing to do work you don't love while you wait for the chance to do the work you do.

And there were the mercy of changes in business models and audience expectations that are bigger than any one person, but that the people who make things, make things. And that success for a lot of people I admire came out later than I wouldn't expected. I did have a one last question for alex.

We have established pog gazing and certainly decline. TV is in decline. Documentation film is in decline. Do you feel like amErica itself is in decline?

Yes, yes, amErica is decline because the countries been ignoring all of the contradictions that have been knowing at IT for years and years, and just pretending that they don't exist. And now they are catching everybody.

Where do you think IT goes?

Look backwards and roll forwards.

I don't think you get a Better answer than that. Alice sydney, this new documentation is called wise guy David chase. In this printing ers, you can see IT on channel for really .

called H B O max now.

Sir engine is a presentation of odessa and jigsaw productions that was created by me p vote and truthy piminy and is produced by gt gram and noah john for checking this week by holy pattern theme original composition and mixing by arman bizarre an our executive producers are generates burma. In lea is Dennis, thanks to the team mat jkx, w. Alexey ney, rich proud and dunch and to the timid odessa, jd crazy, rob, andy crag cox, r.

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